Spontaneous combustion, he thought. I’m going up in a burst of spontaneous combustion-

Then it was gone.

Charlie staggered on her feet and put her hands up to her face. And then, through her hands, came a shrill, building scream of such horror and dismay that Andy feared her mind had cracked.

“DAAAAADEEEEEEEEE-”

He swept her into his arms, hugged her.

“Shhh,” he said. “Oh Charlie, honey, shhhh.”

The scream stopped, and she went limp in his arms. Charlie had fainted.

14

Andy picked her up in his arms and her head rolled limply against his chest. The air was hot and rich with the smell of burning gasoline. Flames had already crawled across the lawn to the ivy trellis; fingers of fire began to climb the ivy with the agility of a boy on midnight business. The house was going to go up.

Irv Manders was leaning against the kitchen screen door, his legs splayed. Norma knelt beside him. He had been shot above the elbow, and the sleeve of his blue workshirt was a bright red. Norma had torn a long strip of her dress off” at the hem and was trying to get his shirtsleeve up so she could bind the wound. Irv’s eyes were open. His face was an ashy gray, his lips were faintly blue, and he was breathing fast.

Andy took a step toward them and Norma Manders flinched backward, at the same time placing her body over her husband’s. She looked up at Andy with shiny, hard eyes.

“Get away,” she hissed. “Take your monster and get away.”

15

OJ ran.

The Windsucker bounced up and down under his arm as he ran. He ignored the road as he ran. He ran in the field. He fell down and got up and ran on. He twisted his ankle in what might have been a chuckhole and fell down again, a scream jerking out of his mouth as he sprawled. Then he got up and ran on. At times it seemed that he was running alone, and at times it seemed that someone was running with him. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting away, away from that blazing bundle of rags that had been A1 Steinowitz ten minutes before, away from that burning train of cars, away from Bruce Cook who lay in a small garden patch with a stake in his throat. Away, away, away. The Windsucker fell out of its holster, struck his knee painfully, and fell in a tangle of weeds, forgotten. Then OJ was in a patch of woods. He stumbled over a fallen tree and sprawled full length. He lay there, breathing raggedly, one hand pressed to his side, where a painful stitch had formed. He lay weeping tears of shock and fear. He thought: No more assignments in New York. Never. That’s it. Everybody out of the pool. I’m never setting foot in New York again even if I live to be two hundred.

After a little while OJ got up and began to limp toward the road.

16

“Let’s get him off the porch,” Andy said. He had laid Charlie on the grass beyond the dooryard. The side of the house was burning now, and sparks were drifting down on the porch like big, slow-moving fireflies.

“Get away,'” she said harshly. “Don’t touch him.”

“The house is burning,” Andy said. “Let me help you.”

“Get away! You’ve done enough!”

“Stop it, Norma.” Irv looked at her. “None of what happened was this man’s fault. So shut your mouth.” She looked at him as if she had a great many things to say, and then shut her mouth with a snap. “Get me up,” Irv said. “Legs feel all rubber. Think maybe I pissed myself. Shouldn’t be surprised. One of those bastards shot me. Don’t know which one. Lend a hand, Frank.” “It’s Andy,” he said, and got an arm around Irv’s back. Little by little Irv came up. “I don’t blame your missus. You should have passed us by this morning.”

“If I had it to do over again, I’d do it just the same way,” Irv said. “Gosh-damn people coming on my land with guns. Gosh-damn bastards and fucking bunch of government whoremasters and… oooww-oooh, Christ!”

“Irv?” Norma cried. “Hush, woman. I got it nocked now. Come on, Frank, or Andy, or whatever your name is. It’s gettin hot.”

It was. A puff” of wind blew a coil of sparks onto the porch as Andy half dragged Irv down the steps and into the dooryard. The chopping block was a blackened stump. There was nothing left of the chickens Charlie had set on fire but a few charred bones and a peculiar, dense ash that might have been feathers. They had not been roasted; they had been cremated.

“Set me down by the barn,” Irv gasped. “I want to talk to you.”

“You need a doctor,” Andy said.

“Yeah, I’ll get my doctor. What about your girl?”

“Fainted.” He set Irv down with his back against the barn door. Irv was looking up at him. A little color had come into his face, and that bluish cast was leaving his lips. He was sweating. Behind them, the big white farmhouse that had stood here on the Baillings Road since 1868 was going up in flames.

“There’s no human being should be able to do what she can,” Irv said.

“That may well be,” Andy said, and then he looked from Irv and directly into Norma Manders’s stony, unforgiving face. “But then, no human being should have to have cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy or leukemia. But it happens. And it happens to children.”

“She didn’t get no say.” Irv nodded. “All right.” Still looking at Norma, Andy said, “She’s no more a monster than a kid in an iron lung or in a home for retarded children.”

“I’m sorry I said that,” Norma replied, and her glance wavered and fell from Andy’s. “I was out feeding the chickens with her. Watching her pet the cow. But mister, my house is burning down, and people are dead.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The house is insured, Norma,” Irv said, taking her hand with his good one.

“That doesn’t do anything about my mother’s dishes that her mother gave to her,” Norma said. “Or my nice secretary, or the pictures we got at the Schenectady art show last July.” A tear slipped out of one eye and she wiped it away with her sleeve. “And all the letters you wrote to me when you were in the army.”

“Is your button going to be all right?” Irv asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, listen. Here’s what you can do if you want to. There’s an old Willys Jeep out behind the barn-”

“Irv, no! Don’t get into this any deeper!”

He turned to look at her, his face gray and lined and sweaty. Behind them, their home burned. The sound of popping shingles was like that of horse chestnuts in a Christmas fire.

“Those men came with no warrants nor blueback paper of any kind and tried to take them off our land,” he said. “People I’d invited in like it’s done in a civilized country with decent laws. One of them shot me, and one of them tried to shoot Andy here. Missed his head by no more than a quarter of an inch.” Andy remembered the first deafening report and the splinter of wood that had jumped from the porch support post. He shivered. “They came and did those things. What do you want me to do, Norma? Sit here and turn them over to the secret police if they get their peckers up enough to come back! Be a good German?”

“No,” she said huskily. “No, I guess not.”

“You don’t have to-“Andy began.

“I feel I do,” Irv said. “And when they come back… they will be back, won’t they, Andy?”

“Oh yes. They’ll be back. You just bought stock in a growth industry, Irv.”

Irv laughed, a whistling, breathless sound. “That’s pretty good, all right. Well, when they show up here, all I know is that you took my Willys. I don’t know more than that. And to wish you well.”

“Thank you,” Andy said quietly.

“We got to be quick,” Irv said. “It’s a long way back to town, but they’ll have seen the smoke by now. Fire trucks’ll be coming. You said you and the button were going to Vermont. Was that much the truth?”

“Yes,” Andy said.

There was a moaning sound to their left. “Daddy-”